Human Rights

All five Central Asian states are members of the United Nations, and have ratified the main UN human rights treaties. Details of the treaties, the treaty bodies, enforcement mechanisms and the periodic reporting mechanism may be found on the web-site of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Pages/WelcomePage.aspx

Human rights standards binding on the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, including the Russian Federation, are contained in the European Convention on Human Rights and its protocols (to be found with other relevant information and the European Court of Human Rights’ HUDOC search engine) at www.echr.coe.int .

The EU has adopted, in 2000, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf). Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, the EU must act and legislate consistently with the Charter, and the EU’s courts will strike down EU legislation which contravenes it. The Charter only applies to EU member states as regards their implementation of EU law and does not extend the competences of the EU beyond its competences as defined in the treaties.